Squad news

THE INTERNATIONAL PLAYERS

15 Oct 2015Great week for the three international players. Jonathan Rodriguez and Uruguay have a perfect mark in the road to the World Cup, Medunjanin was a great help for his country and Borges continues to be very important for Costa Rica.

The three international players of Deportivo lived different situations with their national teams, but all of them had great results during the international break. As always the player with more minutes and longer trips was Celso Borges.

The midfielder played two friendly games with Costa Rica, the first in San José against South Africa and the second against the United States in New Jersey. Costa Rica will start to compete on next month in the road to the World Cup 2018 and these were the last preparation games.

Borges played the full 90 minutes in both games been the centre midfielder in a 4-2-3-1 formation. In the 0-1 loss before South Africa he had two chances to score, one of them a direct free-kick that was close to end in a goal. Later, he repeated the performance in the 1-0 win over the United States, he was close to score at the end of the game, again with a direct free-kick.

The midfielder continues to be a central piece in the scheme of new coach Óscar Ramírez and in the game against the United States he was the best player on the pitch, so it’s expected that he will continue to be a starter in the World Cup qualifiers, Costa Rica debuts on November 13 hosting Haiti.

Borges during the friendly against the United States

But the player with the biggest impact on the week was Haris Medunjanin. Bosnia and Herzegovina was living a critical situation ahead of the Euro 2016. After a poor start they needed to overcome a two-point difference with Israel in order to end third and reach the playoff round. And they did it beating Wales, undefeated until this point, with a 2-0 score and later 2-3 visiting Cyprus, while Israel lost their last two games.

Medunjanin didn’t play against Wales and later was a starter against Cyprus, in this match he played the full 90 minutes and scored two of the three goals. The first was a beauty after connecting a curved shot at the beginning of the meeting. The Bosnians were losing 1-2 at some point in the first half, but Haris equalized after collecting a cross from the left.

Now Bosnia and Herzegovina joins Denmark, Hungary, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Slovenia, Sweden and Ukraine, the eight teams that will fight for the remaining four spots in the Euro. The draw for the playoffs takes place on Sunday and the two games in each series will be played in November.

Medunjanin celebrating one of his two goals

The last international in the list is Jonathan Rodríguez, the striker didn’t play any minute with Uruguay as the South American teams started the road to the World Cup 2018. Cristian Stuani was the starting striker in the games against Bolivia and Colombia, so the young attacker stayed on the bench for both games.

Uruguay won both meetings; 0-2 visiting Bolivia and 3-0 at home before Colombia, and is one of the three countries with a perfect mark of six points in two games –the others are Ecuador and Chile- Coach Oscar Tabarez has faith in Jonathan, but for now he hasn’t debuted in the qualifying round.